Key finding: The theoretically preferred CTB patience measure predicts attitudes toward local investment problems but fails to predict support for complex, future-oriented policies.
Michael M. Bechtel
Professor of Political Economy · University of Cologne · ECONtribute
I am Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cologne and Senior Researcher at ECONtribute. My research studies public support for policy, institutional design, and international cooperation, with a focus on climate policy and experimental survey methods.
Portrait
Research Areas
Research Focus
Climate Policy & Cooperation
Research on public support for climate policy, international climate agreements, and the political economy of environmental regulation.
Institutions & Political Economy
Research on how institutional design shapes political outcomes, including crisis politics, redistribution, and democratic accountability.
Methods: Survey Experiments
Methodological research on survey experiments, conjoint analysis, and causal inference in observational studies.
Public Support for Policy
Understanding what shapes mass preferences over policy, including distributional considerations, fairness, and political communication.
Featured Work
Recent Publications
Key finding: Fear and anxiety are strongly affected by the final policy outcome, relatively mildly by outbreak severity, and minimally by response type and rapidity.
In the media:Journal of Experimental Political Science Blog
Key finding: Opposition to preparing for collective threats depends more on informational deficiencies than on personal experience with realized risks.